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| Art Nouveau tile |
The earliest we are able to travel to France and
England on our next buying trip is June.
Any stock we find won’t then arrive in Australia until August. That won’t do.
So we’ve tried an experiment, and through a
convoluted means we’ve been able to get some new stock from a couple of French
dealers we often buy from and one vintage Indian specialist I’ve bought some
great things from.
It arrived in the country this week and we picked
it up on Wednesday. And yay, it’s great!
It’s not the same as going to Paris ourselves – of
course! And we haven’t got the more
unusual things that I have to just stumble across in my travels. But in terms of many of our “staples”,
enamelware, dough troughs, watering cans, various excellent vintage
kitchenware, it’s great.
We haven’t offered a great deal of vintage and
antique Indian pieces before (although we’ve kept a few for ourselves),
but I’m extremely happy with the items we now have.
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| Vintage Indian tika boxes |
It’s a gamble buying things without seeing them
first, but we’ve been buying from these dealers for a long time, I provided
photos of the types of things I wanted and some excellent things have arrived.
So this new stock will start being presented from
this coming Sunday (15 Feb) at Peregian Beach Market. It will be great to see you, if you can come.
Meanwhile, there has been a small change to our
market-going routine. We tried Yandina
Market – everyone said we should, and we did.
But here’s the thing - getting up at 3.30am just
isn’t natural. It isn’t.
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| French blue enamel kitchenware |
So although it was a pleasant location, and
although we made a profit, we didn’t make sufficient to warrant this kind of
imposition. From now on, at 3.30am on a
Saturday morning we shall be snoring, like normal people. We might start up again in the cooler
weather, but we’ll see.
But at least Yandina laid on one last strange
person before we left.
She was looking through our vintage French images,
and suddenly yelled – yelled – OMG, I LOVE
this picture!
It’s nice
when something resonates so strongly with you, isn’t it? I
said. But I don’t just love this picture, she said, it’s speaking to me.
That’s nice, I said, thinking she was speaking metaphorically. You
don’t understand, she said, it’s really
speaking to me. In a secret
language. I can hear everything it’s
saying. And then she stood there for
a full minute, spouting quite guttural gibberish at me. Relaying what the picture was saying in its
secret language, apparently.
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| Nice vintage fishing gear |
Wow, I said after she had spluttered to a stop, it’s quite a talkative picture, isn’t
it? And I would have thought it would
speak to you in French. Why’s that?
she asked. Because it’s a French picture, I said, so you’d think any secret talking from it straight into your brain would
be in French.
But I don’t
speak French, she said. But you
speak ….. whatever that was, I noted.
Yes, she said, it’s a secret language, which I understand.
And then she left.
This amazing picture, which had her literally yelling and talking in
tongues, didn’t go home with her. She
tried to get her husband to come and have a look, but he was having none of it
and stood a little way along the path, refusing her entreaties to join
her. Can’t say that I blame him.
Later, I realised she had been speaking in
Klingon. She totally was. Now I’m dead impressed.
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| Just in time for Easter, a cute bunny mould |
You know when we had the shop we were visited by
our fair share of people who experienced the world differently (yes, that’s a
nice way of saying nutters), but I’m not sure what brings so many to the
Markets.
So far not many have descended upon us at Peregian
Beach Market, which is just as well because it’s our favourite market and we
want to keep it that way. But when you visit
next Sunday, we shall have the following exchange:
You will yell:
Nuqneh! Gastah
nuq? This is Klingon for Hi! What’s up?
I shall yell back:
Nuqjatlh? Which is Klingon for Huh?,
because you’re clearly a nutter who is yelling at me in Klingon.
